This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses.

There is a deeply relational aspect to the systems people employ for sorting through and prioritizing plural values assigned to social-ecological interactions. Spurred by interpersonal relationships and adhesion to societal core values, such as justice and reciprocity, relational values go beyond instrumental and intrinsic approaches to understanding human behaviour vis-à-vis the environment. Currently, this relational dimension of values is entering the spotlight of the Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) literature focusing on non-material benefits and values people derive from ecosystems, such as aesthetics and sense of place. Relational values foster reflections on appropriateness and morality of preferences and respective behaviours in contributing to collective flourishment across space and time, holding implications for social-ecological justice and sustainability. Recently, several studies explored the potential of using social media data for assessing values ascribed to CES, but did not look at how this emerging approach could contribute to an enhanced understanding of relational values. In order to take up this goal, we conducted a systematic review, screening 140 publications and selecting 29 as relevant for exploring the extent to which relational CES values are inferable through social media. Our results show that social media data can reveal CES values' plural and relational dimension. Social media platforms, thus, can be understood as new arenas for the co-construction of values, where relational values stemming from social-ecological interactions are negotiated and defined. Yet, work on their implications for social-ecological justice and sustainability needs to be extended.

A B S T R A C TThe ecosystem services concept is increasingly gaining momentum in land-use policies and landscape planning. Yet, cultural ecosystem services often lack proper assessments. With this study, we use novel methodological approaches to map the cultural ecosystem service landscape aesthetics for its enhanced consideration in land-use policies. Our study uses expert-based participatory mapping and crowd-sourced (social media) photo data to examine the spatial distribution of landscape aesthetics in the Province of Barcelona, Catalonia. We distinguish the capacity and flow of landscape aesthetics. Landscape aesthetics capacity was assessed through spatial multicriteria evaluation, consisting of a viewshed analysis and an expert-based selection and weighting of landscape features. Landscape aesthetics flow, i.e., people's actual appreciation of landscape aesthetics, was assessed by analysing a sample of 13,460 geolocated photographs from the social media platform Flickr. Our results uncover a substantial mismatch between landscape aesthetics capacity and flow. While landscape aesthetics capacity is widely distributed across the case study area, landscape aesthetics flow is (with few exceptions) mostly concentrated in urban and periurban areas. The main insights for land-use policies derived from our results are twofold. On one hand, landscape aesthetics flow seems less dependent on 'pristine nature' than experts and planners assume, while the complex integration of green and grey landscape features plays a critical role. On the other hand, urban and periurban landscapes as key landscape aesthetics providers should receive additional attention in land-use policies.

No abstract

No abstract